פירוש על ויקרא 7:5

אשם הוא IT IS A GUILT OFFERING — it remains (הוא) a guilt offering until its appelation is removed from it. This teaches regarding a guilt-offering the owner of which has died, or the owner of which has been atoned for by another sacrifice, (e.g. if that originally destined for that purpose was lost and afterwards found), — that although its value (i. e. the animal bought from the proceeds of its sale) is destined to become a burnt-offering for the unemployed altar (lit., for the altar's summer time when there were not sufficient obligatory sacrifices for the altar), yet if one slaughtered it without a special designation) before it was condemned to pasture) it is not fit to become a burnt offering. — Scripture does not, by these words, intend to intimate concerning a guilt-offering that it becomes invalid if slaughtered not as such (but as some sacrifice other than a guilt offering — שלא לשמו) i. e., in the same sense as they (the Rabbis) explained the word הוא that is stated of a חטאת (Leviticus 4:24; cf. Rashi thereon), because in the case of אשם the limiting words אשם הוא are used only after mention of the burning of the fat pieces (not as in the case of חטאת, where חטאת הוא is stated after the command of slaughtering) and could therefore at most be taken as limitating the act of הקטרה in the sense that if this has been done שלא לשמה the sacrifice is invalid; this, however, is not a fact because הקטרה is not essential, and it itself (the אשם), even though the fat pieces have not been burnt at all, is nevertheless valid (Zevachim 5b; Menachot 4a).

אשם הוא, it is a guilt-offering. Rabbi Eliezer and the other rabbis disagree in Torat Kohanim whether the extraneous word הוא is intended to teach that if this offering was not slaughtered on the northern side of the altar that it is invalidated. Rabbi Eliezer holds that the word הוא means that if the guilt-offering was slaughtered while the priest entertained the wrong thoughts i.e. assumed that the animal in question was a different kind of offering, it is invalid. According to his reasoning, the words אשם הוא emphasise the need for the guilt-offering mentioned in verse 1 of our chapter to have been slaughtered for that purpose in order to be acceptable. We find in Zevachim 10 that Rabbi Yehoshua challenged Rabbi Eliezer's exegesis and that thereupon Rabbi Eliezer retracted and derived his ruling that the אשם must be slaughtered as such in order to be valid from the words כחטאת כאשם in verse 7 of our chapter. Considering this, we must ask what Rabbi Eliezer learns from the extraneous word הוא? Perhaps if the word הוא had not been written here I would have made the comparison made in Zevachim 11 between the guilt-offering and the sin-offering described in verse 7 as not applying to the need to perform סמיכה on the guilt-offering just as on the sin-offering, but I would have applied it to the need to slaughter either offering with the right intent in order for it to be acceptable. In order to prevent us from making such an error, the Torah wrote the word הוא next to the word אשם to inform us that this word tells us something about the אשם itself. The Torah wrote the words כחטאת כאשם in verse 7 in order to tell us that both these offerings require סמיכה as something mandatory. The other rabbis, the ones who disagreed with Rabbi Eliezer who used the word הוא to invalidate the guilt-offering unless it had been slaughtered on the northern side of the altar, understand that word to refer back to verse 2 where the principle of slaughtering the guilt-offering in the same place as the burnt-offering has first been mentioned. Repeating this by means of the word הוא indicates that the requirement is mandatory. Although one could challenge these rabbis with similar queries as the ones used by Rabbi Yehoshua to get Rabbi Eliezer to retract, the fact that they did not arrive at a new הלכה by dint of a סברה, a process of reasoning, but applied a rule applicable to other sacrifices also to the guilt-offering by their methodology, it is absolutely acceptable that the word הוא was intended by the Torah to make the site of the slaughtering mandatory. This is all the more so since in the case of the burnt-offering the Torah had spelled this law out in so many words. The contribution of those rabbis is that if we had only had verse 1 in our chapter, I would have reasoned that while it is a desired requirement, failure to slaughter the guilt-offering on the northern side of the altar would not have invalidated it.

Whose owners have died. That is, [the owners died] before they brought the guilt-offering, so it no longer needs to be offered since death atones.

אשם הוא, “it is an guilt offering.” according to Rashi, these two, at first glance superfluous words, seeing that the subject in this paragraph is the guilt offering, teach something about the guilt offering about a person who died before he had a chance to present this offering; alternately, it speaks of a guilt offering whose owner had attained atonement for his guilt before it was offered up through another means. For instance: normally, if the original animal had been sanctified and been lost before the priest appointed by its owner could slaughter it, so that he had substituted another animal for the lost one and performed all the ritual with it, the Torah teaches what is to be done with such an animal when it was found. Normally, the rules for disposition of such an animal are that it is to be offered as sacrifice on the altar when the altar “has summer vacation,” i.e. is not very busy with offerings that are mandatory for people to present. If such an animal had been entrusted to a shepherd to graze, in order to keep it alive until needed, and it was slaughtered without any specific designation, it is fit to be offered as a burnt offering. According to Rashi (in the Talmud Sukkah folio 56a the expression “summer vacation,” is to be understood as something similar to “dessert;” it is consumed in order to tickle one’s palate, not to still one’s hunger.

Have been atoned for. For instance, he separated a guilt-offering and it was lost, and he brought another guilt-offering. Afterwards, the first guilt-offering was found. If so, the owners have already received atonement. This guiltoffering needs to graze until it becomes blemished; they then sell it and buy a burnt-offering with its value. Rashi is explaining specifically that even though its value is destined to be used for the קיץ מזבח (when there were not enough sacrifices donated to keep the altar fully in use, the deficit was made up by Temple-funded sacrifices. This money is used to buy sacrifices for the “summertime altar”), if they slaughtered it without any designation it is not valid for a burnt offering before it is removed for pasture. Once it was removed for pasture, however, if it was slaughtered without any designation, it is valid. This is because it is written, “it is a guilt-offering,” implying: But not a burnt-offering. However, it is obvious that it is a guilt-offering and not a burnt-offering! Rather, this implies that sometimes it can be a burnt-offering. For instance: if it was removed for pasture and they slaughtered it without designation, it will be valid as a burnt-offering.

Even though [its fats] have not been burnt. I.e., since the guilt-offering is valid even if the fats were not burnt, it is no longer applicable to say that a guilt-offering brought for its own sake is valid but if not for its own sake is invalid. Because if you were to say this, the guilt-offering would have to have the fats burnt for its own sake, since “it is a guilt-offering” is written after the burning of the fats. [But this is not so,] for if the fats were not burnt it would still be valid, since atonement is only accomplished by the blood.